


the ground will swallow us anyway

by infiniteoceansofblue



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bipolar Ian, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gay Bashing, Gen, Homophobia, Hurt Ian Gallagher, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, One Shot, Rape Recovery, Rape/Non-con Elements, Violence, adequate comfort?, whole lotta hurt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-26 10:40:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12555632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infiniteoceansofblue/pseuds/infiniteoceansofblue
Summary: Things are fine until they aren’t.Or, Ian is just a little broken. Mickey is in love. And Lip is just trying his best.





	the ground will swallow us anyway

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning for rape, gay bashing, and violence. Please read at your own discretion. 
> 
> This is a sad mess that has not been beta read because I just wanted to get it out there after working on it on and off for about half a year. Yay, me! 
> 
> Anyways, I do hope you enjoy and have a lovely day. 
> 
> my [tumblr](https://infiniteoceansofblue.tumblr.com/) 

_see it’s okay_

_because in the end_

_the ground will swallow us anyway_

_with all of our friends_

_and i won’t feel_

_so different anymore_

_\- “i don’t mind” by sav brown_

 

He gets the call in the middle of his Macroeconomics class. His phone sings out the automated Apple product jingle he hadn’t bothered to change, and the professor sends him an icy glare. The class is tiny and he has no way of hiding. Lip ducks his head down and tries to sneakily turn it on silent. His phone rings again a moment later, before he can shut it off, and this time, the professor calls him out on it. “Phillip, go pick up your phone _outside_ of this class so you don’t disturb us any further.”

 

Lip nods, mumbles an apology, and hurries outside of the lecture hall, pressing the phone to his ear. “Hey, Fiona, what’s up? I’m in the middle of class.”

 

There’s a moment of silence. “Hey, Lip,” says Fiona. It might just be the crappy phone connection, but her voice sounds hollow. “Um, sorry. I, uh - ” Her voice breaks. “You should get back here. Something’s happened. It’s - it’s Ian.”

  

Lip’s heart sinks. His mind automatically jumps to everything that could’ve happened. Maybe Ian went off his meds again and stole another fucking baby. Or maybe - maybe the worst happened. Maybe he’d gotten low, so low, and found a gun that Mickey hadn’t hidden well and just. Just ended it. Ian’d been better, though, he tries to reason with himself. They’d finally gotten him on a steady med regime that actually fucking worked, that didn’t have him sprinting to the bathroom every few minutes or living like an extra from the Walking Dead. That made him _Ian_ and not some watered-down caricature. He’d been better.

 

Things had been _fine_. For the first time in fucking-forever, things were fine.

 

And now, apparently, they aren’t anymore.

 

He doesn’t trust his voice, but somehow, he manages to breathe out, “What is it? What happened? Where are you? Is he - ” He doesn’t need to finish the sentence. He doesn’t think he can.  

 

Fiona breathes out into the phone speaker, and Lip imagines her squeezing her exhausted eyes shut and running a hand through her hair. “He’s alive,” she starts off with, and he lets out the air he didn’t realize he was holding. “We’re at the hospital. Um. Um, he was walking home. Some fuckers, they jumped him. Roughed him up real bad. And - and they - ” She lets out a sob. “Lip, it’s - it’s bad. Really bad. They hurt him. You should come back. Please.”

 

He is reeling at this information. These types of things happen often in their neighborhood. It’s just part of the package of growing up in the South Side. But for it to be so bad he’s in the hospital, for it to be something that renders Fiona stumbling on her words and sobbing and broken? Lip doesn’t want to imagine what has happened.

 

“Yeah, yeah, of course I will. I’m leaving now. It’s gonna be alright, okay? I’ll be there in forty minutes.”

  
His finger presses the ‘ _end call’_ button and he closes his eyes, allowing himself a brief moment of utter terror. It consumes him, swallows him, speeds up his already jackhammering heart. And then he reigns it all in with one deep breath. Clenches his shaking hands into tight fists. He has to be strong. For the kids, for Fiona. For Ian.

 

When his fear has been pushed far away, replaced by an unbreakable front, he straightens. Pulls out his phone again and texts Amanda that he needs to use her car.

 

* * *

 

They’re the closest in age and closest in everything else as well. Lip cannot remember a time before Ian.

 

It’s always been Ian.

 

He is his earliest memory. It was snowing, fast and thick and heavy, their thin, holey Goodwill jackets about as protective as wearing nothing at all. He remembers, clearly, the three of them sitting on a park bench. Him and Fiona and Ian. Ian was little and tired and sick, like he often was back then. Frank and Monica were elsewhere, snorting crack or injecting themselves with needles and forgetting entirely about their three children, and Fiona had left, trying to find them some sort of shelter for the night.

 

Lip held his little brother to his chest, singing his own rendition of _Row, Row, Row Your Boat_ and _The Itsy-Bitsy Spider_. Ian had been crying - quietly, silently, like he’d already learned at age three that he was to stay small if he wanted to survive. Lip had gently rocked him back and forth until his tears had disappeared and dried on his soft, milky cheeks. Lip can’t remember much after that, only that they’d managed to live on to the next day. But he does remember, with startling clarity, Ian’s eyes. Wide and innocent and green, full-lashed, staring up at Lip with pure trust.

 

It’s those eyes he thinks about now.

 

Fiona is sitting in the waiting room, her head in her hands, Veronica by her side with Liam on her lap. Debbie’s been crying, her eyes puffy and red and Carl sits next to her, face blank. Mickey’s there, too, sitting away from the group yet still with them. He’s here. Lip breathes a sigh of relief.

 

“Lip!” Debbie says and rushes forward, hugging him tight. She’s sobbing into his chest, and to his surprise, Carl gets up and hugs him as well.

 

“Hey, guys.” He squeezes the both of them and tries to smile, but he can’t really do it. “How you holding up?” They’re both looking at him with strange, haunted expressions. Lip knows it has to do with what he doesn’t know. What Fiona hadn’t been able to tell him on the phone.

 

Mickey sends him a curt nod. Things have been better between him and the Gallagher’s, for Ian’s sake, but there’s still a _thing_ , between Lip and Mickey. The other man just rubs him the wrong way. But he’s thankful, so fucking thankful, that Mickey didn’t bail today. That he is here for Ian, for whatever the hell is going on.

 

Fiona’s exhausted, Lip can tell. She’s still in her uniform, her hair a greasy mess, eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep, stress, and crying. They hug, wordless.

 

“How is he? What happened?”

 

She shakes her head, glances at the kids, but they stare right back at her. They know, Lip knows, but Fiona doesn’t want to repeat it. She doesn’t want to hurt them even more than they’ve already been hurt. But after a brief pause, she starts: “He was attacked, coming home from work. We haven’t heard anything from a doctor, except a nurse who came out about an hour ago. She said he was alive, a few broken ribs and a mild concussion. His ankle’s pretty mangled, too. He was in pretty critical condition earlier, because of blood-loss from… a cut. On his back. But he’s stable now. And, uh… ”

 

It doesn’t sound too bad, just a typical rough South Side fight. But she isn’t finished. “Um…” Her voice cracks, and she’s blinking away tears that are pouring out of her eyes like broken faucets. “He - it was…”

 

“He was raped.” Carl’s voice cuts through Fiona’s tearful stammering and buries its sharp end in Lip’s chest.

 

He stands there, empty, seeing through fog and listening through ear plugs, as Fiona takes over for Carl and describes the bleeding, the tearing, the fact that the monsters didn’t use a fucking _condom_ so they’re starting him on some post-exposure treatment to “decrease his risk” of STDs. The word they carved deep into his kid brother’s back, a permanent reminder of how much this world has fucked him over.

 

Ian’s seventeen. Seven-fucking-teen. He doesn’t deserve this, no one deserves this, but he’s so young.

 

No one deserves this, but Ian especially.

 

* * *

  

The doctor comes out about thirty minutes later. He’s tired, like all of them, and solemn. “Gallagher family?”

 

They all stand. V had taken a sleeping Liam back to her house about fifteen minutes ago, hugging them all before leaving. Lip has been here a good half an hour, in which Mickey has stormed to the nurses station and screamed about how fucking _slow_ everything was _, and when was some fucking doctor going to get the fuck out here so they could finally get some fucking information out of this fucking shithole?!_

 

“Yeah, yeah, that’s us. I’m Ian’s older sister and guardian.”

 

“Fucking finally,” Mickey mutters and steps forward with the rest of them. “Can we see see him?”

 

The doctor nods and steps forward, shakes Fiona’s hand. “I’m Dr. Wellington. Ian’s been sedated. He was in a lot of pain and confused and struggling. We were afraid he’d further hurt himself. He probably won’t wake up until at least a few more hours.”

 

“Yeah, but, we can still see him, right?” Mickey’s voice is still gruff as ever, but there’s an odd shakiness to it. Like he’s unsure. Scared. “I wouldn’t - I don’t want him to wake up alone.”

 

“Yes, of course,” replies the doctor. “But we’re going to limit his visitors to immediate family members that are over eighteen, at least until he’s moved.”

 

“That’s bullshit!” Mickey swears, and the kids are shooting Dr. Wellington their best threatening glares.

 

Fiona sends them all sharp looks. “Is there any way around that? Mickey’s his boyfriend, Ian would want to see him. And the kids will be respectful and all that.”

 

The doctor shakes his head, and at least has the decency to look regretful. “I’m sorry, but it’s hospital policy. I can’t do anything to change them.” He then turns back to Fiona. “You mentioned that he’s bipolar?”

 

* * *

 

When Ian had first gotten sick, had first fallen off the deep end and stayed in Mickey Milkovich’s bed for a good three weeks, Lip had been hesitant to visit him. Things between them were awkward and stilled, in a way they hadn’t ever been. It wasn’t that Lip didn’t _want_ to visit his brother - it was that he wasn’t sure if he had the right to, anymore.

 

Fiona had said he was full of bullshit. She went everyday with the kids, sat by Ian’s side and told him random things about her day, let the kids chatter on as well. When Lip asked if it helped, she just shrugged. “Probably not,” she’d said. “But I’m there for him. He needs to know that. You have to make sure he knows that you’re there, too.”

 

A large part of the issue was, selfishlessly, Lip’s thing with Mickey. In all honesty, he hated Ian’s boyfriend, or whatever they were calling it now. It had to do with a lot of things, most of them stupid and biased. But the biggest issue was the fact that it was all Mickey that had done this.

 

Mickey had let Ian fall in love with him. Then the fucker had gotten married to a woman and broke Ian’s heart.

 

In Lip’s mind, it was pretty simple. Mickey had hurt Ian. Mickey had led to his undoing, had allowed the brewing concoction of shitty genes and terrible situations continue until a perfect stew called ‘bipolar’ had been made.

 

So he avoided the Milkovich house. Avoided Mickey. Avoided his brother like the little pussy he was.

 

It’s not his proudest moment.

 

* * *

 

(And maybe he avoided Ian because he knew he was at least partially to blame for this entire shit show. He saw the symptoms, he did. He knew. But he wanted nothing more than for them to be false. So he did nothing, and Ian was sick, and it was his fucking fault.)

 

* * *

  

It’s late, by the time the nurse comes out and says they’re allowed to visit Ian. The kids are asleep, Debbie’s head on one of his shoulders and Carl on the other. Mickey’s still there, much to his surprise, alternating between sitting and standing and pacing and panicking. He’d stomped out of there about a half hour ago, muttering something about needing a fucking smoke, and Lip had thought he’d split for the night. Run away, like white trash does, when things get too hard. Lip wouldn’t have blamed him.

 

But Mickey had come back, his eyes suspiciously red, and plopped back down in his seat with his arms crossed.

 

Lip gently extracts himself from where he’s being squished between his siblings and stands up. Fiona’s already down the hall, bombarding the doctor with questions.

 

“Uh, Gallagher.” Mickey’s sitting on the edge of his seat, his expression cagey and awkward. “He’s probably sleeping, right? But, um, if you - if you could just…” He swipes his thumb across his bottom lip, eyes not meeting Lip’s, and finally says, “If you could just tell him. That I’m here, or whatever. Just - tell him that, okay?”

 

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I will.” Lip gives him a slight nod, blinks away his surprise, and turns around, hurrying to catch up to Fiona.

 

* * *

 

Ian is sleeping when him and Fiona reach the room. It’s not a natural sleep. There’s none of the snuffling, shifting, twisting and turning that Lip has gotten used to over the past 16-ish years that they’ve shared a room. He has Ian’s sleeping patterns memorized down to every odd sniff.

 

The sleep that he is in now is not the one that Lip knows by heart. He’s still, silent, and stiff-limbed. His face, pale and bloodless, is littered with tiny cuts and bruises with a neat row of stitches going across the side of his forehead. There are machines connected to tubes connected to his brother’s body all surrounding the bed.

 

He doesn’t look tiny and defenseless or some other bullshit cliché like that. He just looks dead.

 

Fiona lets out a small, weird gasp, like she can’t really catch her breath. The nurse looks back at her and says, apologetic, “He looks a bit rough, but it’s just from the blood loss from the cut on his back. Once the blood is replenished and he’s out of risk, we’ll move him out of here and he’ll have a bit more color in his face.” She smiles at them gently and leaves.

 

“Hey, kiddo.” Fiona sits down in the chair and gazes lovingly at Ian’s lifeless face. “You’ll be alright.” She gently takes Ian’s hand - the one not swathed in bandages - and rubs it. “We’ll all be alright.”

 

Lip feels out of place. Awkward. It’s the hospital setting, or Fiona’s mindless words, or Ian looking half-dead, or all of it. Or none of it.

 

He’s confused and tired and his heart kind of hurts. He doesn’t understand the protocol for what you’re supposed to when something like this happens. When your little brother is broken in front of you. When you weren’t there to save him. When you should have saved him. When your guilt is eating you up from the inside out.

 

Fiona’s still squeezing Ian’s hand, murmuring random things about nothing of importance. Lip drops his tired body into the chair next to her and buries his head in his hands. He feels her hand trace wide, comforting circles against his back.

 

“What are we gonna do?”

 

She hums a little. “I have no idea. But we take it one day at a time, yeah?”

 

He sighs heavily. “But - what they did to him.” He lifts his head from his hands and stares at her. “How are we supposed to help him with that? How is he supposed to recover from that? And you heard what the doctor said. What if this triggers something? Fiona, what if he stops taking his meds again and pulls a fucking Monica? What if - what if - ” He doesn’t realize he’s crying, sobbing, until Fiona has him in her arms, whispering _it’ll be okay_ in his ear, over and over until he actually starts to believe it.

 

Finally, he gathers himself enough to pull away and wipe at his tears.

 

“Listen to me. Hey, Lip, listen, okay?” She takes his face in her hands, and her eyes are earnest. “We’ll get through this. We’re Gallaghers, remember? We’ll get through this, together. Like we always do.”

 

After a moment: “Okay.” And they sit there for a while, the only sounds in the room being the constant beep of the heart monitor and his own restless heart.

 

Eventually, he sighs and shifts in his seat. “You should go home,” he tells her. “Bring the kids back, get some rest. It’s getting late.”

 

She looks a bit uncertain, but after a bit of cajoling on his part, she finally agrees. “Fine, I will. You sure you’ll be okay here?”

 

“Yeah. We’ll be fine. Go home, Fiona.” She brushes a light kiss over Ian’s forehead and leaves.

 

Lip leans back in the chair and closes his eyes. He’s got a long night ahead of him.

 

* * *

 

Ian’s eyes are open when Lip wakes up a few hours later. There’s a crook in his neck and the digital clock displaying 3:43 AM in bright red letters.

 

“Hey, Ian. You’re awake,” he starts, but then stops. There’s nothing else he knows to say and his voice, no matter how much he tries to gentle it, is like crumpled gravel.

 

Ian’s eyes are huge orbs of dizzying emptiness, and Lip tries not to look away from them. They’re Ian’s eyes. The same eyes from all those years ago, except instead of the endless trust and innocence, they are now old and tired and broken. “Hi,” he whispers back. If Lip’s voice is gravel, Ian’s is ice. Thin, cracked, breaking.

 

Broken.

 

“How, uh, how you doing?”

 

Ian swallows, blinking heavily. He opens his mouth, closes it, and then finally slurs, “My head hurts.”

 

He turns to the nurse on Ian’s other side, who’d quietly entered a few minutes ago. She’s fiddling with the IV bag and Lip gives her a questioning look.

 

“He was pretty heavily sedated,” she says, by way of explanation, and leans over Ian, shining a small light in his eyes. “Sweetheart, your head hurts because you’ve got a concussion. Do you know where you are?”

 

“The hospital?” Ian barely manages to slur out his answer before he begins to nod off. He’s had his eyes closed for a good minute before he mumbles, barely audible, “Where’s Mickey? Is he okay?” He forces his eyes again and stares at Lip with increasing urgency. “Where did he go?” His hand is weakly trying to tug on Lip’s arm, but misses completely, grabbing onto thin air instead. He takes his hand for him and wraps them together.

 

It doesn’t pass his notice that Ian’s knuckles are bruised and peeling, his fingernails embedded with blood. Ian fought them. He fought fought back and it seems he held his own and it doesn’t mean anything, because Ian is in a hospital bed and the fuckers are probably halfway across the country by now. But it’s something that Lip clings onto.

 

“Lip?” he slurs again, starting to nod off again but doing everything he can to stay awake. “Lip, where’s Mick? Did they hurt him?”

 

Jesus fucking Christ.

 

“He’s fine.” Lip swallows, pushes past the lump in his throat.”Mickey’s fine. He’ll be visiting you tomorrow, okay? He wants to be here but there’re these dumbass hospital rules in place. He’ll be here, though. Don’t you worry.” Ian’s asleep by the time he’s done talking, his head lolling to the side and mouth slightly hung open, completely dead to the world. It’s kind of cute, and he’d laugh if it wasn’t so horrible.

 

Lip allows himself a small smile and a brief moment of just looking at him, then says to the nurse, “When can we bring him home? When the sedation wears off, right?”

 

“It’s hard to say. I’d give it a few hours for the sedative to wear off, but he’s not going home for another week at least. We have to watch out for infection. Who knows what knife they used, how clean it was. By the morning, he’ll at least be able to keep his eyes open for more than a few minutes.” She sets down the IV bag and lets out a heavy sigh. “Look, I’ve dealt with cases like this before. I’m just warning you. It won’t be easy when he fully wakes up. There’s going to be a lot of trauma. He might not be the same person you knew before.”

 

Lip nods, suppressing an eyeroll. He’s slightly annoyed that this random nurse is pretending to know anything about Ian. Yeah, sure, it’ll be tough, but everything to do with the Gallaghers is tough. He’ll bounce back, like he always does. He did with bipolar and he will with this. Ian will be okay, and he tells the nurse so.

 

She just shrugs. “Alright, sweetheart. Press the call button if anything happens. I’ll be back in a few hours to check on him.” On her way out, she gently squeezes his shoulder, and then leaves.

 

It’s just him and Ian. He sits down heavily on the chair.

 

“What the fuck are we supposed to do?”

 

He’s met with the steady beep of the heart monitor.

 

* * *

 

Ian wasn’t Frank’s kid.

 

It’s kind of funny. That the epitome of Gallagher family dysfunction had been revealed when they’d all sat down around the table for a nice dinner after a long day of work, like the all-American, white picket fence, apple pie family they couldn’t be further from.

 

No, the Gallaghers would never be that family. Frank would never be sober and a decent human being. Monica would never be in her right mind or properly care about her children. And they would never have a dog that graduated from dog obedience school and Monica would never attend weekly PTA meetings and they’d never have heaters that worked and a life different than the one they had, where 17-year-old’s were raped and stripped of themselves just for the hell of it.

 

Lip acted tough. He would hold his head high, like he was proud of being white South Side trash, like ghetto-toughened part of him was something that he treasured and held proud like a trophy. Like the fancy equipment and stifling money of his college was beneath him. Like he didn’t want, more than anything, to grow up like his classmates. It wasn’t that he wanted to be born into endless money, like most of them were. He just wanted to be comfortable. He didn’t want to have to worry about how they were all going to scrounge up the cash to pay the bills. He didn’t want to worry about the lack of health insurance and the cost of Ian’s medication and how he had to do well in school because he was going to be the one who would become a fancy robotics scientist and roll in the millions and pull his family out of the depths of poverty.

 

It was selfish and embarrassing and pathetic. But Lip was jealous. He was jealous of this:

 

Ian wasn’t Frank’s kid. He didn’t have scumbag flowing through his veins. He didn’t have addiction written in permanent script on his DNA. He was South Side but he wasn’t - not by genetics, anyway. And he had the chance to leave, to hop on the next bus straight into suburbia without an obligation to even glance back. Where he would have a chance at something more than what he was given. Where family dinners weren’t once in a century and served by their bipolar mother and her butch, black girlfriend and instead daily, normal occurrences.

 

Where he would be safe.

 

But Ian had said no to that. To safety, to security, to normal. And Lip had been so confused. Angry, even. Ian had the chance to leave. Why wasn’t he taking it?

 

If it was Lip, he would have gone without a blink of an eye. And it’s selfish and embarrassing and pathetic. But he never said he wasn’t.

 

* * *

 

Two police officers are there when Lip enters the hospital room the next day, carrying a few coffees for him and Fiona. One is an older black woman, tall and authoritative, with a kind yet sharply professional way about her. The other is a young man, doesn’t seem much older than Lip himself, and is obviously less-experienced from the awkward way he holds himself, trying to look important while the woman achieves it just from being there.

 

Ian is lying on his side, his knees pulled tight to his chest in fetal position. It doesn’t look very comfortable, but his eyes are darting and anxious and Lip feels a tug in his own heart. He must feel some sort of security from making himself small as possible. The female officer is sitting in a chair across from him and speaking softly, her voice steady and calm, but Ian is looking more and more distressed.

 

“What’s going on here?” He sets the coffees down on the bedside table and pulls up another chair.

 

“I’m Officer Wilkinson,” she says. “I’m sorry to have to do this, but we need to ask some questions about what happened. Is Ian’s parent or guardian around? We need some things to be signed.”

 

Lip looks at his brother. Fiona had been here when he’d left and she’d been planning on staying the whole day. She should be here.

 

“They needed to talk to her about insurance or something,” Ian mumbles, his words slightly thick in his mouth. He’s been sluggish all morning. It was like he was there, but not really. Lip hopes it’s just the after-effects of the sedatives and not some permanent psychological side-effect of getting raped and tortured in an alley.

 

“Okay. We can start this without her. We’ll take it slow, alright? If it becomes too much, we can take a break.”

 

Lip tries to smile encouragingly, but his mouth refuses to cooperate. He wants Fiona here. He doesn’t know how to deal with this. But neither does Ian, and Ian has to, so he tells himself to stop being a fucking pussy and deal with it.

 

“Do you remember what time you were out that night?”

 

“It - it was after my shift. I think - I think it was like ten-thirty? It could have been later. Yeah. I think it - it was later.”

 

“That’s fine,” the officer says and Lip nods his head along like an idiot. “And can you tell me what happened leading up to it?”

 

Ian swallows. “I was walking down Rogers. Um, it’s just a few minutes away from home. It was dark because the - the street lights are always out on that street. Right, Lip? The kids throw rocks and stuff at them and no one really bothers to fix them. And it was late and I wasn’t - I wasn’t really paying attention.” His voice cracks. “I don’t really remember if I saw them before… Before they - Uh, it was dark and I was tired and I wasn’t paying attention, I didn’t think to pay attention…”

 

Lip’s heart feels like it’s being squeezed to nothing in his chest. He reaches over to take Ian’s hand, the one that isn’t bandaged. Ian’s is limp and sweaty in his but it makes him feel better, to actually feel his brother’s presence, and he prays the feeling is mutual.

 

“You’re doing great, Ian. Do you need a moment?”

 

“No. No, just ask your questions. Just go through them.”

 

They go through them.

 

Ian describes how they knocked him out, dragged him to an alley. How he woke up with someone pounding into him from behind, however many minutes later, how he was gagged and hurt and how he was there for another three or four hours. He doesn’t go into detail what happened after and Officer Wilkinson doesn’t ask for any.

 

Lip remembers what he was doing that night, when his brother was getting raped and tortured and torn to shreds: Getting fucking wasted and playing beer pong in his dorm.

 

“Can you describe their physical appearances for me?”

 

Ian does so and the officers write down everything he says. They’re vague, though, and general. Just a blur of Could probably match a good quarter of the Chicago population. How the hell are they going to find them?

 

“Ian, how many were there?”

 

Lip holds his breath. The doctor had told them they’d found multiple samples of DNA, from the rape kit, but they hadn’t been able to decipher how many, exactly. He guesses it doesn’t matter, not really, because Ian’s going to be fucked up about it no matter how many assholes did anything to him.

 

“It - five. It was five.”

 

There’s a moment of silence. Ian’s staring at him with a terrified expression, like he’s afraid Lip will judge him or scream at him for this, and it makes him sick. He opens his mouth to say something right. But all that comes out is a long, shaky exhale.  

 

Ian curls further into himself, hiding his face with his hands. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he murmurs frantically, over and over, and Lip feels sick.

 

“Hey, hey, it’s alright. You don’t need to be sorry, okay?” He gently pulls Ian’s hands away from his face and wipes away at his tears. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

 

Ian sniffs and buries his face in the pillow. “Please go,” he whispers, his voice wrecked.

 

Officer Wilkinson glances over at her partner, then stands up. “Okay. You did great. Thank you, Ian. I’m sorry to have to put you through this.”

 

He doesn’t reply. Only burrows himself deeper into the safe cocoon of blankets.

 

Lip pauses a moment, then stands and exits the room to where the officers are waiting. “So, what happens now?”

 

“It depends on what you want to do,” she says. “We’ve got Ian’s descriptions and the DNA samples but, I’m not going to lie to you. This case won’t exactly be top priority. It could take months - years, even - for anything to happen. But it’s up to you guys. You could pursue this legally or just...”

 

“Or just forget about it. Act like it didn’t happen and you guys don’t have to do anything about it, right? Just another Southside rape case to sweep under the rug so you won’t have to deal with the problem.” He can’t keep the slight bitterness from his voice; the Gallaghers haven’t exactly had the best experience with law enforcement and the justice system.

 

Officer Wilkinson, for her part, is unfazed at his tone. “I understand that not taking direct legal action seems like letting the people who did that to your brother get away. But the process will be tough and the outcome might not exactly be what you want. I’m just letting you know. But again, it’s entirely up to you.”

 

He purses his lips. They don’t have the time and certainly not the money to bring this to trial. But it still fucking hurts, knowing that the monsters have gotten away. And there’s nothing he can do.

 

* * *

 

There’s infection. Of-fucking-course there’s infection.

 

Lip wants to scream. He does scream, a little. Shakes his head in disbelief or anger or both when Fiona tells him, her voice wrecked, and presses a fist to his mouth to contain it. Then he turns on his heels, storming out of the hospital. Walks out through a side entrance. And he screams.

 

Just: “ _FUCK.”_

 

Then he takes a breath, reels himself back in, and walks back inside.

 

He doesn’t feel any better.

 

* * *

  

By some intense amount of cajoling and maybe a threat or two of a lawsuit over homophobia, Mickey is able to annoy the hospital staff enough that he’s allowed into Ian’s hospital room.

 

Lip watches from the corner of the room as Ian shakes to pieces in Mickey’s arms. Mickey holds him together.

 

“Don’t let them find me,” Ian gasps, his eyes shining with fever and desperation. “Mickey, don’t let them find me!”

 

Lip almost steps forward, his heart clenching in his chest, but he forces himself to stay put. It was not his name that Ian called. It’s not his job, not anymore. So he mumbles a random excuse that no one even hears and he retreats out of the room. Surrenders, in a way. Watches everything unfold from the window. Watches his brother fall apart and Mickey put him back together. And again, and again.

 

* * *

  

“I love him.”

 

They’d been sitting on Ian’s bed late at night, sharing a joint and fucking around. Lip had been grousing about Karen or Mandy or both and Ian had shared his own Mickey Milkovich woes.

 

But the proclamation of love had been sudden and shocking. Lip hadn’t known much about his brother and Mickey - just that they fucked regularly and that Mickey was an asshole. (Both were not unexpected.)

 

So when Ian said the three big words, his expression suddenly serious, his eyes staring at Lip with earnest, he’d been surprised. It was only a few minutes ago that Ian had been declaring that Mickey was probably the worst thing that had ever happened to him. And now he loved him?

 

“What?” There’s an awkward pause, and then he hurries to add, “Congratulations, man. Uh, that’s great.”

 

“No. No, it’s not great.” Ian heaved out a deep, tortured sigh. “I love him and he doesn’t love me. Or, even if he did love me, he would never admit it. It’s terrible.”

 

Lip laughed and ruffled his hair. “Sounds like some serious fucking angst. Look, he’s just a dumbass if he won’t admit it. But, honestly, it sounds pretty perfect to me. Just fucking and no drama and shit. I suggest you just keep what you have now. Seems ideal, don’t you think?”

 

“I know, I know. It’s just… I really like him. Like, I love him. And I want to do the boyfriend thing, you know? It’s stupid, whatever. But I want it anyway.”

 

He nodded along like he knew what Ian was talking about, but eventually just shook his head. “Look, I’m the last person you would want relationship advice from. Talk to Fiona. Her and Steve are pretty hot-and-heavy in the domestic business these days.”

 

“Oh. Okay.” Ian sounded a bit disappointed. Lip knew he was disappointed.

 

He wished he could give him something more. When they were younger he always knew what to say because nothing he said could be wrong. But Ian was different and so was Lip and it wasn’t like before.

 

It would never be like before, and Lip was glad. But at the same time he missed those days long ago. Sure, they were miserable and confused and sad and hungry, yes, but he was the one who knew the answer to the universe.

 

* * *

  

“Lip,” Ian croaks. Lip straightens from where he was kind of slumped over, almost nodding off.

 

“Yeah, kid?”

 

“Where’s Mickey?” he murmurs, like his tongue is too heavy for his mouth. His eyes are droopy, his complexion grey and sick and bruised.

 

“Uh, to get a smoke, I think. He’ll be back, soon. Don’t worry.” Lip worries.

 

They lapse into silence. Ian closes his eyes, like holding them open for the ten seconds was exhausting. Finally, he says, with a slightest hint of humor in his voice, “I’m a fucking mess, aren’t I?”

 

Lip starts chuckling a little. Even Ian cracks the tiniest of smiles. “Uh, yeah. Kind of.”  

 

More silence. Then: “The detectives said - they said something about… a _word_ on my back. That - that they cut. What was it?”

 

His vision tunnels. How the fuck is he supposed to say this? “It - it was… it was _fag_.”

 

Ian starts crying - sobbing. Lip doesn’t know what the fuck he’s supposed to do. He doesn’t know how to heal this kind of pain. He doesn’t think Ian knows, either.

 

But Mickey comes back soon after that and folds a trembling, sobbing Ian into his arms. Protects him.

 

Lip wonders how many ways he can say _thank you_ before the words start to mean nothing.

 

* * *

 

Ian - like most toddlers around the age of three or four - asked endless questions. About _everything_. He asked why the sky was blue? And do chipmunks have friends? And why are chicken nuggets so good?

 

Most of his questions were funny. Lip loved answering them, loved when Ian’s eyes would widen when he always knew the answer. The sky’s blue because it eats a lot of blue cotton candy, duh. Of course chipmunks have friends, they would be lonely otherwise! Chicken nuggets are _so good_ because they just are.

 

But sometimes, Ian would ask questions Lip couldn’t answer.

 

He’d ask: Where’s Mommy? Where’s Daddy? Where are we? Why is Fiona crying? Why don’t we have anywhere to live? What happened to the car? What happened to our blankets? What happened to us?

 

And Lip couldn’t lie about that.

 

He was the one who could protect Ian. Who could hold him at night, when the heater was broken and they didn’t have any blankets. Who could make up funny little stories to make him laugh when he was afraid of the dark and monsters and Monica never getting out of bed again. Who could make him smile through the tears, smile and be happy.

 

So he couldn’t lie about the things that really mattered. He owed Ian that much.

 

* * *

   
Ian is discharged a few days later. Lip isn’t there for it, but Fiona calls him that night. He immediately forgets the mountain of Robotics homework he has to catch up on and picks up the phone. “Hey, Fi, how was it? Ian okay?”

 

She sounds less tense when she answers, a bit relaxed and comfortable in her exhaustion. “Mm, depends on how you define _okay_. He’s still breathing, at least.” He can imagine her sitting at the kitchen table in the dim lighting, hair in a loose ponytail and mindlessly holding a lit cigarette in one hand.

 

“Well, that’s a success, at least. Everything’s sorted out?”

 

She hums a _yes_ to his question. “I picked up his prescriptions on the way home from the hospital. We’ve got a whole drug store’s worth of shit.” She huffs out a little laugh. “Fucking thankful Frank hasn’t showed his ass up around here, or else he’d be digging through all of Ian’s pills.”

 

He chuckles, too. Frank has been MIA for the past month or so and, honestly, he couldn’t give any less of a damn. “You got the stuff for his anxiety, right?”

 

“Yeah. Hopefully it’ll start working and we won’t need to adjust the dose. He had a really bad panic attack just a few hours ago. It was rough. Mickey was around to talk him down from it, thank God.”

 

“Milkovich is still hanging around?” Lip struggles to keep the bitterness from his tone. “I thought he would’ve up and left by now.” It’s not true; after seeing the way Mickey held Ian together in the hospital, Lip knows Mickey’s going to be here for the long run. But it feels good to deprecate him. Familiar, like nothing has changed when, truthfully, everything has.

 

“Nah,” she says. “He’s still here. I think he’s gonna crash here for a while. ‘Til Ian gets back up on his feet. He’s good for him, you know. Really good. I know why you have problems with him. I do, too. But they connect in kind of an amazing way. And Mickey’s a shockingly good housewife. He helped make dinner, today!”

 

That, Lip can’t disagree with.

 

He changes gears, sick and tired of Milkovich creeping up into every conversation about Ian. “Are you gonna find Ian a therapist? I know ‘Gallagher’s don’t get therapy’, but you know that’s all bullshit. We skimped out on it when he was diagnosed and look at where it got him.”

 

She sighs. “Yeah, I know. This isn’t something we can just sweep under the rug. Thank God the insurance covers therapy. I just don’t know how I’ll convince him, ya know? Ian isn’t exactly… the best at talking about his problems.”

 

“You say Milkovich has the magic Ian touch, right? Tell him to talk to him about it. Manipulate him, if he has to. Isn’t that what boyfriends do?”

 

Fiona laughs. “Yeah, exactly, a normal relationships consists of talking and maybe manipulating their traumatized, bipolar boyfriend into therapy.” Then, she huffs out another breath. “Yeah, I’ll talk to Mickey about it. I’m sure he’ll agree.”

 

He isn’t sure who she’s saying will agree, Mickey or Ian, but he doesn’t think it really matters so he doesn’t ask for clarification. Just says he has homework and she needs to sleep and they say goodbyes. Lip ends the call. Looks down at his homework then pushes it aside.

 

Pulls up his laptop and searches “therapists in South Side Chicago area”.

 

There’s more important things to do.

 

* * *

 

The universe has fucked them over in so many ways Lip can’t even count them. First, it was giving them Frank and Monica as parents. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, it plopped them in the Southside with late bills and minimum wage and a fucking heater that spends more time eating up their money than actually doing any heating. It gives Debbie an attitude the size of the sun and Carl sociopathic tendencies and Liam possible brain damage and Fiona a shit-ton of stress plus a 100 percent guarantee of 15 more years of it. And, worst of all, the universe decided one day it would be fun to give Ian hopes and dreams and an actual chance of leaving the hellhole they call home, only to rip it all way. In return, it gave him Monica’s crazy genes and made him gay in a neighborhood that would beat rape him until he was practically dead, at least the part that mattered, just for being who he was.

 

As for him? Lip and the universe are best friends, it seems. He’s gifted with a quick tongue and a mind wired in a way that makes him find Quantum Physics actually _interesting_. It gives him a few slightly psychotic girlfriends, yes, but at least one of them liked him enough to fill out some college apps for him. It gives him a higher education and an actual fucking chance of doing something with his life besides filling up another prison cell.

 

But it’s not a perfect relationship. They’re more like frenemies, him and the universe, if one would like to put it into the terms of middle school girl drama. It gives and it gives, but at the same time, it takes from the rest of his family. He can’t help the guilt that courses through his brain whenever he comes home from class, his brain filled to the brim with the mechanics of the newest robotics technology, only to find Fiona, still in her work clothes, talking Ian down from a panic attack.

 

When he finds that it’s Mickey comforting Ian, not him, the guilt crashes through his veins at full-force. Weirdly enough, he’s sort of jealous. Because he’s thankful, of course he’s thankful, that Ian has someone who’s willing to be cried on. He’s thankful Mickey holds him, unabashedly. He’s thankful for Mickey.

 

Yet, at the same time, he knows it’s his job. What the hell is he doing, wasting his time getting a bullshit higher education? Learning rich boy things in a rich boy university? He should be here, at home, helping his brother recover from being fucking gang-raped and tortured in an alleyway just two streets down from their house.

 

But he never said that he wasn’t selfish.

 

So he goes to class every day and comes back home a few times a week to pretend like he’s actually doing something to help. He parties, drinks himself shit-faced and smokes pot among other things. But he does his homework dutifully, studies when it’s needed, and pulls B’s and A’s on most everything. Like the perfect college student he isn’t but is trying to be.

 

He finds himself searching things up on the internet once in awhile. The doctor had given them pamphlets. Glossy booklets with glossy, smiling people on the cover and, written in a Word cursive font, _“Rape Recovery - Hope For Healing”_ or some other stuff of equal amounts of bullshit. They’d been given recommendations for therapists they can’t afford and insurance doesn't cover. Help that wouldn’t actually help, not when it came to stubborn, unyielding Ian.

 

So he searches things up on his own. ‘Male rape’ and ‘trauma’ and ‘gay-bashing’ and ‘PTSD’ and ‘what the fuck am I supposed to do when my little brother is gang-raped and tortured and broken’. But he just gets a lot of statistics that aren’t helpful, facts that only serve to confirm his worst fears, and _your search did not match any documents_.

 

* * *

 

“He’s real fucked up.” Mickey takes a long drag of his cigarette. His eyes are distant, squinted, looking over the roofs of the houses and past the horizon like there is something beyond them.

 

Lip nods and inhales more smoke into his lungs. It’s his eighth - ninth? - cigarette over the past few hours he’s been home. At this point, he barely even realizes how much he’s smoked. Just the coating taste of ash on his tongue and bright, electric nicotine running through his veins. “Yeah. But he’ll be okay. Just give it time.”

 

They smoke in silence for another few minutes. Then Mickey sighs and crushes the cigarette butt on the porch. “I should go back in. He’ll be awake soon.”

 

Mickey slips back inside and Lip is left alone. Smoke curls in front of his face; grey, grasping tendrils that he stares at intently until they eventually blend in with the air.

 

He’s not going back in. He can’t.

 

That’s what he tells himself, anyway. But, eventually, guilt and shame outweigh his selfishness, and he walks back inside.

 

There’s soft music playing. Plinky piano and sparkling wind chimes coming out of Debbie’s phone, which is sitting face-down on the counter. Ian is sitting, hunched over, the couch, his legs pulled up to his chest and his eyes closed. He’s pale, purple-blue veins visible on his milky eyelids, dark smothering of sleepless nights sitting under the perfect swoop of his ginger lashes. Debbie sits in front of him, on the ground, her legs folded in proper meditation posture. Next to her, stiff and gruff and awkward, is Mickey. He’s got his eyes closed, too, and his expression is something between a pissed-off Angry Bird and a twelve year old kid who’d just been caught with porn on his laptop.

 

Lip almost laughs out loud, but manages to stifle it by letting out a tiny snort. Debbie opens an eye and shoots him a warning glare while Mickey - not even lifting an eyelid - just grunts out, “Not a _word_ , Gallagher.” Ian doesn’t really react visibly, but Lip thinks he might see the slightest hint of a smile on his chapped, bloodless lips. His heart swells.

 

Debbie told him earlier that they’d been trying meditation to help with Ian’s anxiety, since all the meds were doing shit. Lip had scoffed at the idea, rolled his eyes at the hipster bullshit, but now, it doesn’t seem like too bad of an idea. It’s at least an opportunity for Ian to rest his eyes without nightmares and Debbie to feel like she’s actively helping out and _come on_. Mickey Milkovich is _meditating_. That’s enough to convince Lip that this is the best idea in the world.

 

He walks to the kitchen, grabs a beer and a bag of Doritos, and plops down on the kitchen counter, noiselessly munching on his snack. He watches them. Something a little bit like peace settles in his stomach.

 

Maybe things will be okay.

 

* * *

 

Things aren’t okay, not at first.

 

But slowly, ever so slowly, they start getting better.

 

Ian spends a lot of time in bed. Mickey spends a lot of time in bed with him. Lip spends a lot of time at school, studying studying studying.

 

Ian goes to therapy. Lip takes a Pysch 101 class. They both hate it. But they both go back. And now Ian has weekly appointments and multiple coping mechanisms and Lip knows a whole lot more about nature vs. nurture then he did before.

 

He comes home every weekend, at first. The first few times he walks in the door, Ian’s sitting on the couch next to Mickey, doing that thousand-yard stare at nothing, like he’s not really there. But the third week, he and Mickey are standing shoulder-to-shoulder, washing dishes in the kitchen sink and talking quietly to each other. By the fourth, he’s helping Debbie bake some kind of funfetti catastrophe.

 

By the fifth, Lip doesn’t exactly know, since he’s in his dorm room with his head buried in his Physics textbooks, frantically studying for an exam the coming week. But Fiona calls him that night, her voice light and relaxed, and says that Ian and Mickey cooked them dinner. Lip isn’t even surprised, at this point. Maybe Ian should be a chef.

 

Ian starts laughing, again. Lip’s poking around the fridge, looking for something to starve off the nicotine jitters - he’s trying to cut back some - when he hears it. Ian laughing. The two of them are curled together on the couch, Ian’s head in his boyfriend’s chest. And Ian’s laughing.

 

Lip grins so hard he thinks his lips might fall off.

 

“I’ve missed that,” Mickey says gruffly.

 

He doesn’t hear Ian’s response, but he doesn’t need to. Lip grabs a carton of ice cream and goes back to his homework laid out on the kitchen table. Still grinning.

 

Everything’s not perfect. Things are just barely edging upon okay.

 

And that’s fine.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this angst-filled mess. 
> 
> Feel free to scream at me in my [tumblr](https://infiniteoceansofblue.tumblr.com/)  inbox or in the comments (please, do scream at me in the comments... it makes me happy). Cheers!
> 
> (Edited to fix spelling/grammar and spacing issues. AO3 hates my formatting, apparently.)


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